


Ne vile velis

by La Reine Noire (lareinenoire)



Category: 15th Century CE RPF, Historical RPF
Genre: Gen, Yuletide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-24
Updated: 2009-12-24
Packaged: 2017-10-05 06:02:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,687
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/38522
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lareinenoire/pseuds/La%20Reine%20Noire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This, he knew, was a boy who could be King. And he, Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, was the idol of a King.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ne vile velis

**Author's Note:**

  * For [twitchbell](https://archiveofourown.org/users/twitchbell/gifts).



> The title comes from the motto of the Neville family and translates to 'Wish Nothing Base'. Many thanks to angevin2 for beta-reading and getting me to the end.

He was eighteen years old and fresh from a resounding victory somewhere in the wilds of Wales, while Warwick could do little more than refrain from mentioning his own ignominious rout in the streets of Saint Albans. But Ned, giddy and laughing and made generous by his own success, did not bring it up.

 

Warwick thought he'd seen a knowing glint in the young man's eyes, but he'd shrugged it off as his own imagination. They had precious little time to spare in the first place, knowing the Queen was gathering her strength in Yorkshire.

 

He'd watched Ned seat himself on the throne in Westminster Hall, just as his father had done a bare few months earlier, but instead of silence, he was met with a volley of cheers. London had rallied behind this boy-king as long ago the people had rallied behind a boy named Arthur, and, just as Arthur had, Ned began the long journey northward to wage war for his realm's future.

 

Warwick had never seen a boy more supremely confident, more effortlessly charming. A far cry indeed from his serious father.

 

This, he knew, was a boy who could be King. And he, Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, was the idol of a King.

 

 ***

 

"Who in the name of Satan and all his legions is _Elizabeth Grey_?" Warwick had thrown open the door to the presence chamber, his face white with fury.

 

Cecily Neville, Duchess of York and mother of the King of England, looked up from her embroidery with eyes cold and forbidding as Yorkshire ice. "I'll thank you to keep a civil tongue, Cousin. When I wrote to you, it was with good intentions."

 

"Has he taken leave of his senses?"

 

"He claims to be in love." The graceful, black-clad shoulders rose in a delicate shrug. "My son tells me the deed is done and cannot be undone. I am by no means pleased, but there seems little point in bemoaning what is clearly beyond our control."

 

Warwick was pacing back and forth, fiddling with the sheathed dagger at his hip. "And he thinks this will please me?"

 

"My lord of Warwick, he is the King of England. He needs please no-one but himself, and so he has done."

 

"I will not stand for this--"

 

"My lord, I believe you shall." The Duchess rose to her feet, tall enough to look Warwick in the eye. "You are a subject, Cousin, and it will behove you to remember that."

 

"I put him on the throne!" As he whirled on her, his cloak swept across a table, sending several goblets clattering to the floor. "Ned damned well ought to remember _that_."

 

The Duchess' narrowed eyes and tightened mouth spoke volumes. Warwick held her gaze without flinching, the seeming-idle thought occurring to him of how much Ned looked like his mother. The same bright hair and chiselled features, the same smile that could charm the most disinterested viewer, even if the Duchess' was rarely in evidence. None of these things could have been said of the late Richard, Duke of York.

 

There had been rumours, as there always were when a great family's heir was born abroad, and those who had thought to count the months could not help but wonder that the beautiful young Duchess had conceived in Rouen while her husband was commanding King Henry's army in Pontoise.

 

"I shall assume, Cousin," the Duchess said icily, "that those were words spoken in anger and that you do not mean them."

 

Warwick nodded curtly, but said nothing. Several weeks later he stood beside the newly crowned Queen of England as she joined her husband on the dais. That they were a ravishing pair none of those present could have denied, even those who muttered under their breath of upstarts and, more dangerously, witchcraft.

 

The boy, it seemed, had grown into a man, and Warwick did not at all like what he saw.

 

***

 

It had taken every last ounce of Warwick's willpower not to spit on the ragged hem of the former Queen of England's gown. Half an hour he'd spent on his knees before her, murmuring fatuous apologies and pretending not to notice the smirk she hadn't even bothered to hide, an expression echoed on the face of the King of France, who watched from his throne in utter satisfaction.

 

It was, Warwick knew, the only choice. But, God in Heaven, it burned.

 

Beside him, his son-in-law was shaking, his eyes narrowed to indignant slits. Not that George of Clarence knew the first thing about sacrifice, or about Marguerite d'Anjou, for that matter. He'd been scarcely more than a boy in his mother's care when that Queen's armies had cut down his father and elder brother in the snowdrifts of Wakefield and dragged Warwick's father to the scaffold less than a day later. Warwick had spent so many years hating her that it had become second nature to him, and yet the twists and turns of Fortune had somehow led here, to Amboise.

 

Somehow, all of Warwick's plans had fallen away, leaving nothing but this: a travesty, for which his father's ghost would forever haunt him.

 

"This is all Ned's fault," George declared, throwing back a full glass of wine and pouring himself another. "If he hadn't been such a damned idiot..."

 

"That's enough," Warwick snapped. "Can't be helped now."

 

_I won't forget how well my gaoler treated me_, Edward had told him as he stood in the courtyard at Middleham Castle, blue eyes unreadable. _You might consider, Cousin, the penalties for treason, and learn to appreciate my leniency_.

 

Of course, if there was anything he'd learnt from Richard of York's spectacular failures, Warwick had observed that treason itself had lost all but its most basic meaning. Treason was whatever the King deemed it to be, and if Edward was so damned set on proclaiming him a traitor, Warwick saw no reason to forbear.

 

It was only as he'd stood on the prow of his own ship, listening to the screams of his elder daughter echoing from within as they waited just outside the harbour at Calais where Warwick's own lieutenant refused them entry on Edward's orders, that he realised just how deep the chasm between them had grown. Edward would never have hurt a woman deliberately, and yet he'd condemned Warwick's Isabel to give birth in a ship's hold without even wine to dull the pain.

 

That Warwick himself was partly responsible for his daughter's plight did occur to him in passing, but he found it far more convenient to blame Edward. By blaming Edward, he could justify this final, desperate attempt to change his fortune.

 

"Of course," he said, turning back to George, "we can't deny that, had your brother been more agreeable, none of this would have happened. But we can't change that now."

 

The Rubicon had been crossed and there was nothing to be done for it.

 

***

 

_Do not persist in this madness. I ask you as your cousin and as your king--call off your men and come back. It need not end like this, Cousin. It need not end in death_.

 

The paper was crumpled, having been thrown aside in anger several times already, only to be picked back up. The handwriting was familiar, painfully so, down to the near-unintelligible _Edwardus Rex_ scrawled across the bottom.

 

"Is that from Ned?" John had paused in the doorway to the tent, his thin face lined with exhaustion. Warwick looked at him and John sighed. "I thought as much."

 

"It's a pardon." He kept his eyes on his brother's face, but the other's expression did not change. "Did he offer you one?"

 

John nodded wordlessly.

 

"Were you tempted?"

 

"You are my brother. My blood."

 

"So is he--your blood, anyway. And, depending on one's point of view, he might be the King of England."

 

John laughed. "Depending on one's point of view, Richard? One either is King or one isn't, surely."

 

"You know as well as I do that it isn't that simple and hasn't been that simple since long before we were born." Warwick looked once more at the letter. "He landed at Ravenspur. I wonder if it was intentional."

 

"Ned always had a bizarre sense of humour," John said with the flash of a smile. "I don't doubt that he'd appreciate taking the throne from the House of Lancaster using their own tactics."

 

"He would, at that." Even Warwick couldn't restrain a brief smile of his own before lapsing into thoughtful silence. "Who would you choose, John, if you had to wager between us?"

 

"I've already gone to the trouble of choosing sides, Richard."

 

"You know what I mean. Ned has the Devil's own luck." The name tasted strange on his tongue; it seemed like an age since he'd referred to his wayward cousin thus. "He always has. If anyone could seduce the goddess Fortuna herself, I don't doubt it would be him."

 

"What exactly do you wish me to say? That I expect us to die tomorrow?" John laughed again, the sound raw and corrosive. "Any man in his right wits expects to die when he goes into battle."

 

"Ned doesn't," Warwick said softly. "Ned never did."

 

Even now he could not forget that day in Yorkshire, their army blinded by whirling snow as the dead piled higher and higher, bodies hacked till they were unrecognisable. And Ned, reckless as only a boy of eighteen could be, charging over and again until the Lancastrian lines broke and the sun split the lowering clouds.

 

As he stared at the blanket of fog that covered Barnet Heath, Warwick fancied he could see the _rose-en-soleil_ glittering in the distance.

 

Only time would tell if Ned's accursed luck would hold out, if his faith in his own survival was well placed. It was not a man's place to dare the heavens so, but Ned had lasted this long on the strength of his own boldness.

 

And Warwick would meet him, be damned to Fortune. A man made his own luck in this world, and there could be no turning back now.


End file.
